ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING FORAY PLANNING

Suggestions for the future -- Guidelines for creating and managing a NEMF Foray budget and getting registrants

Dear Dorothy and Ed,

I would like to share with you what I learned from my experience as the general chairman of the 2002 Foray. It is important to remember that everyone comes into that post as a volunteer and new and initially ignorant of what is required, and needs to be treated with appreciation and courtesy.

Find a location with suitable facilities and get a preliminary contract, including the cost of security/liability/insurance, deposit, and available facilities for bedrooms, lecture rooms, labs, evening auditorium, sales, as well as sorting, recording, display – see requirements for sorting and display in the NEMF Manual. Needed: good collecting sites in close proximity, and transport to them by an affordable bus company.

Choose a good date. For a college, this needs to be in August before the school year begins. For a hotel, September is less expensive, after the Jewish holidays.

Get chairs and discuss cost with each (get sample expenditures of previous forays from the NEMF Secretary). The cost of busses is a large item so the walks coordinator needs to contact the local bus companies and ask for costs. I found sample expenditures for various expenses very helpful but I learned that some were generous depending on the chair responsible for the item (e.g., Awards: 2001 spent a lot, 2002 spent very little). Other estimated costs were too low, such as postage that had gone up (e-mail, on the other hand, is more useful) and gasoline for the busses that had also gone up. Some estimated costs for items such as nametags, handouts, printing, busses, mycophagy are tied to the number of registrants, as well as to the person taking care of these items. See #4.

Plan a budget and calculate conference fee assuming 150 registrants: It is advisable to figure on 130 regular, i.e. “paying in full” registrants, to start with, and to add a buffer of $1000 to expenses before calculating the registration fee. One needs to keep in mind that a very high registration fee will turn away some potential registrants but that a low registration cost might create a loss for NEMF. Provide guidance to the new general chairman accordingly. Also, people register late so one should not be discouraged by a low number of registrants, say, six weeks before the foray. It helps to get a low deposit requirement and late cancellation date from the facility.

The general chairman needs good people to fill each post, and needs to know what each person can provide and take responsibility for each item. Example from 2002: one registrar, a publisher, bought nametags and handouts, printed the tags, programs and walk lists, and was assigned all line items for mail and phone, lending us his facilities at cost but had to deal with more registrants than expected; he assigned other responsibilities to the second registrar. (The division of labor should not be legislated.)

Try to double up jobs to save money (e.g., 2002 had Lincoff and Lowen as both mycologists and program chairs).

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

I gave each chair a budget, the job description from the NEMF manual, and trusted him or her to work capably, offering my advice only if wanted. I also said it was essential to stick to the given budget item, or consult with me if it was too small. In this way, I could keep control of the overall expenditures and authorize any changes. My original request was: If you go over, it is your own money.

Get a sense of the competence of the general chairmen: some may need handholding and guidance and possibly your permission for every step; others, if judged able, should be trusted to make decisions and shift expenses “from Peter to Paul.” Once registration is above 150, the break-even number, you must allow leeway.

Do not be petty but rather look at the big picture, extend trust instead of control. Again, do not read each line item but rather the total allocation for each chair, and adjust for number of registrants. See #4 above, and consider this: Elinoar Shavit magnificently supplied my- cophagy for many more people than expected and therefore needed more money for butter, oil, etc. Be flexible about the pre-allocated budget amount. I can spell this out in a different way: “Sorry, we budgeted for 150 people. The rest of you get no programs, handouts, mycophagy....”

Get the membership list of each hosting club, ask for volunteers, and make sure they are in- volved. Consult each club president for suggestions, if for no reason other than to prevent a feeling of being left out of the loop, and to ensure cooperation in the effort of drumming up volunteers and registrants, and to make everyone feel needed and wanted.

Do publicity to increase the number of registrants, to keep NEMF in the black: Send an announcement to NAMA, Fungi Magazine, Mushroom The Journal, all NEMF clubs newsletters, etc. Get together a list of all the newsletter editors of all the clubs affiliated with NEMF and ask them to advertise in every issue and by weekly e-mail.

Publicize and use the website, www.nemf.org.

Sit down with the chef and discuss the menu. NEMFers want good food, salads, fruit – some are vegetarians, some require gluten-free meal options. Discuss box lunches, which are only needed for all day walks. Find out about selections for items not on the menu.

Awards: the 2002 chairman asked for donations from the hosting clubs, and her total expenditure was something like $45, for a book for me of attendee’s messages, inexpensive but a great labor of love and the most wonderful present I ever got. Good idea for the future.

When the number of registrants increases, so does the cost of some items AS does the income. Again, consider items with wisdom, please.

If the number of registrants increases (=more collectors) and if the collecting is good, it would be good to have more identifiers. But that is a very iffy decision to make in advance. Paul Sadowski, the registrar, sent out a superb confirmation letter. It should be used in the future.

Contents of registration packet: program, walks, collecting guidelines with a basic checklist on the back of the sheet, list of attendees, nametag, tag holder, handouts.

Figure out how to handle meal tickets.

Get material from the Chamber of Commerce, for each county where walks are held or nearby activities for non-mushroomers are available.

Suggestion: you may want to keep the “expired” vice-president in the loop, as whatever and definitely of help to his/her successor. I needed a lot of help from Pam, my predecessor

I suggest adding a couple of pages to the NEMF Manual, with this, as well as extractions of what exists: I had to look up again and again the linear 80 feet table requirement for both sorting and display.